Far Left/Far Right

CNN's Campbell Brown in her interview on The Daily Show earlier this week described her new show, "No Bias, No Bull" as trying to fill the center space left between her time-slot competitors the "far-right" Bill O'Reilly and the "far-left" Keith Olbermann. Stewart seemed to think her far left/far right characterization of these two apt. It says a lot about our political geography that a millionaire employee of one of the country's largest corporations could be considered a man of the far left. This is precisely the kind of media narrative that keeps us disoriented and confused, and excludes from the publbic debate anybody who is truly left, and so therefore insures that our politics stays right of center.

For whatever you might think of Olbermann, he's not a man of the left. To think that his views are shaped by some far-left reading and political associations is close to ludicrous. His thinking and sensibility is shaped more by his experience as a sports reporter who has made a career of being outraged about this or that. Now he's outraged about what this particular GOP administration has done to undermine the rule of law. Good for him.  But that doesn't mean he's left.  He's not even close to being left. Noam Chomsky is left.  Ralph Nader is left.

Olbermann's positions on the Bush administration's undermining the constitution are no different from Libertarians like Ron Paul, Reagan Republicans like Bruce Fein, and many of the paleocons at The American Conservative magazine. For all his faults, and there are many, his show was important because it was the one place in the MSM where someone was calling a spade a spade. Strenuously opposing what Bush Cheney has done is not a left/right thing. Anybody with any sense opposes them, and opposes what McCain would do.

Scott McConnell, editor of that far-leftist rag The American Conservative, tells us why:

Remember the neoconservatives? Three years ago they were a hot topic, as people all over the world tried to understand why the United States had invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Then interest waned. First Paul Wolfowitz, then Doug Feith, then Don Rumsfeld left the administration. George W. Bush, who asked his dad “What’s a neocon?” in the summer of 2004, took their counsel less. Core neocon concepts—a blend of forceful rhetoric about expanding democracy, contempt for most existing democratic countries, and enthusiasm for starting wars—began to seem unhinged from reality. They had dreamed up the Iraq War to transform the Middle East, argued it was pointless for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, agitated for attacks on Iran. Without repudiating them directly, Robert Gates and Condi Rice eased them from the stage.

John McCain wants to bring them back, in triumph, on horseback. . . .

That’s not all. Top McCain advisers like Robert Kagan seek to reignite a Cold War with Russia: Kagan recently told a Washington audience he wouldn’t want to live in a world in which Russia had a preponderance of influence over Georgia. Elliott Abrams, son-in-law of Norman “World War IV” Podhoretz, is reportedly in line to head McCain’s National Security Council. As a Bush appointee, he’s worked at stymieing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Expect a McCain administration to back the Netanyahu policy of turning the West Bank into isolated bantustans instead of a Palestinian state. Read more.

But we live in a world in which nothing is real except as it fits into some media-determined marketing niche.  Our degraded political discousrs is just another great example about how the market just rules, man.